Usefulness of a PARAFAC decomposition in the fiber selection procedure to determine chlorophenols by means SPME-GC-MS.

In this work, a procedure based on solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry is proposed to determine chlorophenols in water without derivatization. The following chlorophenols are studied: 2,4-dichlorophenol; 2,4,6-trichlorophenol; 2,3,4,6-tetrachlorophenol and pentachlorophenol. Three kinds of SPME fibers, polyacrylate, polydimethylsiloxane, and polydimethylsiloxane/divinylbenzene are compared to identify the most suitable one for the extraction process on the basis of two criteria: (a) to select the equilibrium time studying the kinetics of the extraction, and (b) to obtain the best values of the figures of merit. In both cases, a three-way PARAllel FACtor analysis decomposition is used. For the first step, the three-way experimental data are arranged as follows: if I extraction times are considered, the tensor of data, X, of dimensions I × J × K is generated by concatenating the I matrices formed by the abundances of the J m/z ions recorded in K elution times around the retention time for each chlorophenol. The second-order property of PARAFAC (or PARAFAC2) assesses the unequivocal identification of each chlorophenol, as consequence, the loadings in the first mode estimated by the PARAFAC decomposition are the kinetic profile. For the second step, a calibration based on a PARAFAC decomposition is used for each fiber. The best figures of merit were obtained with PDMS/DVB fiber. The values of decision limit, CCα, achieved are between 0.29 and 0.67 μg L(-1) for the four chlorophenols. The accuracy (trueness and precision) of the procedure was assessed. This procedure has been applied to river water samples.